Wide area networks are used for intrastate, interstate, and worldwide communication of voice, video, and other data between networked communication devices. Such traffic is increasingly being carried as packets across packet networks, such as the Internet. To access such networks, a user obtains a fee-based subscription to a subscriber communication line to, for example, the user's premises from a network service provider. The subscriber line may be, for example, a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and/or a digital cable (e.g., digital television and data cable). The user may connect one or more communication devices through a local area network (LAN) access point, such as a wireless LAN access point, and a modem to the subscriber line. The LAN access point thereby interfaces the communication devices to the subscriber line and, therethrough, to the wide area communication network, such as the Internet.
A network service provider may provide various fee-based services through the subscriber line to subscribers, which can include Internet access, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony, IP television (IPTV) (e.g., television content delivered via the Internet), and/or IP gaming (e.g., interactive gaming between various game consoles across the Internet). Such applications can have widely varying packet communication bandwidth characteristics and needs.
Some network service providers allocate different levels of bandwidth to subscriber lines based on tiered service plans, and constrain traffic through those subscriber lines to no more than the allocated bandwidths. While some bandwidth levels may be sufficient for some applications, such as Web browsing, they may be not be sufficient to provide an acceptable quality of service for real-time VoIP calls, IPTV, or IP gaming.